For example, when on a video call with someone else, your video must be uploaded before others can view it. The upload speed or sending speed is how fast your computer can send files to the Internet.
Download speeds are nearly always faster than upload speeds with these connections. For example, when you browse the Internet, you download files from a server to be viewed in your browser. A download speed or receiving speed is how fast your computer can get files from the Internet.
Most broadband connections are asynchronous, which means different speeds depending on how data is traveling. However, if you expanded this road to six lanes and allowed three cars in each direction (i.e., more bandwidth), 100 cars could get across the road faster. Getting 100 cars through this road would require them to line up and wait for the car in front of them. With more bandwidth, however, the file would download faster as there is more "room" for information to travel.Īnother way to think of bandwidth is to imagine a two-lane road that allows cars to travel in one lane in each direction (download and upload). While the file's downloading, your computer must wait until it's complete, making your Internet seem slow or causing other downloads to slow down.
You can think of it like a larger pipe letting more water flow out of a drain.įor example, a slow connection with a small bandwidth may cause a file to take a minute or more to download. Having more bandwidth keeps your computer and other devices on your network from waiting for "space" through which they may send and receive data. How does having more bandwidth speed up your Internet?
Read last weeks blog to see how High Bandwidth Communication is a plus for hiring a local supplier. Point to point links, another commercially available technology, is.
You cannot create good requirements documents without going through a series of sessions of high-bandwidth communication – all the stakeholders need to be in the same room brainstorming, sketching, modeling, asking and answering the hard questions in order to get a true picture of what needs to be built. A number of these systems are reviewed and bandwidth, latency and cost comparisons are made.
Sure, in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) written documentation is important, but only to document what has been agreed on. Which brings me to software development, in particular the requirements gathering process. We get the most out of this type of communication – it is the quickest, most honest, and best way to ensure that all parties really understand one another. If you are sitting in front of someone, seeing the same things that they are, experiencing the same outside factors as they are, reading their body language and expressions, then you are truly having high-bandwidth communication. Phone calls are medium-bandwidth communication – they are certainly better than written communication in terms of getting your point across, but they lack a certain aspect of expressiveness that can only come across in a face-to-face conversation. You can hear real excitement in the person’s voice you can interject with questions you can ask for clarifications and you can repeat back to the storyteller your understanding – so that they know that you got it. Imagine that letter or email exchange as a phone call instead. It’s also very easy to misunderstand what the writer is actually trying to express. It’s very hard to experience expressions, feelings, or other intangible elements that add to your experience. You can read the words and hopefully understand what the person is trying to get across.
It’s the same experience, just faster.ĭescribing something by writing it down is low bandwidth communication. Email is faster than writing and mailing a letter.
Remember in ‘the old days’, you would write a letter to a friend describing your recent trip: the experience, the exhilaration, how relaxed you felt? A few days later your friend would receive it, and maybe a few days later they would write back, and then a few weeks after you sent your letter, you might get one in return.